The art of modern China has once again entered the London galleries in force. The Hayward Gallery, which has a long and successful record of exhibiting work by the world’s most adventurous and innovative artists, has now devoted its entire main space to contemporary work from China—pictures, sculptures, photography, videos, human statues, and performance art. Across town in the Barbican Art Gallery, hidden away upstairs in a couple of side rooms in a large photography exhibition, is the utterly contrasting work of the Chinese photojournalist Li Zhenshang. Li has given the world its most extensive visual record of the horrors of Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution of 1966–76. It provides a grimly realistic prelude to the world of high contemporary fantasy at the Hayward, an exhibition which has so many new Chinese directions that it almost ceases to have direction at all.
Perhaps the most outré room in the Hayward exhibition is that given over to the work of Sun Yuan and Peng Yu. At the center is their Civilization Pillar(original 2001), a twelve-foot-high obelisk made of human fat collected as a by-product of liposuction. It parodies traditional, dignified Chinese marble pillars meticulously curved with clouds and dragons; this one is soft, yellow, perishable, and seemingly slapdash—the very antithesis of that which is being parodied. Many westerners will feel the unintended horror of historical memory tied to the piece is further compounded by the impassive young Chinese women in baggy striped pajamas who stalk viewers as part of